Here’s another round in my exchange with my brother-in-law over the meaning of the masthead quote (first round here). His comments are much more interesting than mine :) so the conversation will sound a little one-sided:
Anthropology has had a fascination with magic since its earliest days. First thoughts included an evolutionary scheme where magic evolves into religion which evolves into science … with all the appropriate comments about the primitive or superior mentality of the people who ‘believe’ at various points along that continuum.
Then, there was great interest in the ‘science’ of ‘primitive’ people — understandings of the natural world, for example. This interest continues today and a lot of money is put into research about, for example, Amazonian peoples’ knowledge of medicines.
You point to the ‘magic’ (read ‘primitive’) in the civilized or scientific world … and there are lots of great examples of things that we take on faith in our own lives. This all leads to interesting discussions in my first year anth class about religion and whether or not science fits the definition of religion (or indeed of magic). Many of my students don’t want to contemplate the possibility.
As to the link about technology and the context for that quotation … I find it revealing that ‘technology’ is said to predate ‘science.’ That is consistent with how widely applicable in time and space Benford’s words are.
The encyclopedia authors go on to say that science is the study of natural facts. Again I agree, but that makes Benford applicable even more relevant and suggests that the knowledge that moose hunters take with them to the bush is, in fact, a science. In this sense technology and science have always gone hand-in-hand and to suggest that science comes after technology, or, that some people might have technology but no science is crazy. I guess what I’d really like to see included in any definition of technology is ‘knowledge’ — and that a combination of both the material (the gadget) and the mental (ideas or sometimes the application of the material) is needed to understand what technology is. As I tell my students, if you don’t know where the moose are on a particular day in a particular season, having a fancy rifle isn’t going to help you feed yourself.